Highest Points of the Veeva R&D Summit 2017

By Rick Ward, Vice President Commercial Operations, Trifecta

Just a few weeks ago, our Trifecta team gathered at the Veeva R&D Summit alongside some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies and biotechs including: Eli Lilly, Abbvie and Novartis. As a Silver Level Veeva Technology Partner, we had the opportunity to connect with new & longtime industry colleagues alike; all focused on a common vision. A vision fueled by our determination to create better, faster and more streamlined ways to accelerate the medical advances of tomorrow. Thanks to Veeva, we were able to come together and collaborate among the brightest minds in our field at this event. Below, I’ve captured a few thoughts on what I believe were among the “highest points” of the Summit.

Being Unified Is Hard Work, But Worth It. I had the opportunity to sit in on a session led by Janssen covering how opportunities are amplified within a unified clinical environment. Terry Murphy, Vice President of Global Clinical Development Operations for Janssen Pharmaceuticals shared that he has been “stunned by the sheer amount of paper moving around”, and from my vantage point, I completely agree with his assessment. We must act now to deliver modern solutions and technology to solve this problem. While several ways address this, one innovation I am close to at Trifecta is our ability to transfer investigator training documents and information to the Veeva Vault instantly and automatically. This advance alone can make a difference in the workflow of every individual on the study team by making it easier-so that they can focus on the more important aspects of their positions-beyond searching for documents that have been mismanaged, misfiled or simply incomplete.

Ecosystem Friendly Means More Collaboration. To increase the pace of innovation, collaboration across internal departments, sites and external partners is more important than ever. High levels of collaboration will produce value that is shared across the ecosystem, and we know that when we do this, we can deliver exponential impact in meeting vital human needs. To achieve this, we must surround ourselves with best-in-class partners dedicated to the highest levels of customer service solutions while building and sharing creative ideas throughout the digital team ecosystem. When we do this well, we will create momentum, and this momentum will expand the opportunities for sponsors to invest in and explore additional areas of research & development. When we do this very well, this momentum will extend to site partners to complete the virtuous circle; driving satisfaction for the sponsors who “bring sites on the journey, and show the benefits to them” as shared during Eli Lilly’s talk on “Expanding the eClinical Ecosystem”.

Transparency Leads to Greater Enterprise Visibility. A fully integrated data platform can bring real time visibility to many critical aspects of clinical trials. Real time visibility will enable better enterprise management decisions to be made faster and with more accuracy. At Trifecta, we fully embrace this idea in both concept and practice. We are laser-focused on delivering real time visibility to all training activities and communication activities at the site level, to study teams and executives: making transparency that was once a luxury, now available 24/7 with literally a few clicks of the mouse. Melissa De Swaef, Eli Lilly’s Global Site Activation Process Owner, shared her thoughts on this topic as well during the Summit when she cited the reduction of errors as a benefit derived from enhanced visibility, “everyone has access to the same document, and there are no more mistakes because someone used an old version of a document”.

Inspection Readiness Is Inspection Confidence. Imagine “confident” as the word to describe your team’s preparation for an upcoming inspection. Each day, all documents and data transferred seamlessly, reports prepared in a timely fashion and changes reflected real-time. The dynamic nature of clinical trials means that technology has a role and responsibility in ensuring data is audit ready at all times to ensure compliance and allow teams to focus more on healthcare advancements than the intricacies of data management. Shayna Lambert of Janssen shared her thoughts on this during her session on “Best Practices for Improving Inspection Readiness”. Along with her best practice inspection readiness checklist, she emphasized discipline: that successful inspection readiness can be achieved with the right amount of planning and daily investment in an active TMF routine.

Rick Ward is the Vice President of Commercial Operations at Trifecta where he leads all business development, marketing and commercial operations. Rick brings more than 20 years of clinical operations technology expertise to his role. Prior to joining Trifecta, Rick held positions at Greenphire where he delivered growth for their commercial platform in clinical trial payment technology. Rick is a proud alumnus of the Pennsylvania State University where he is an active member of Smeal College of Business Alumni Association. Rick can be reached at rick.ward@trifectaclinical.com